Road Trip
by Krissy Mae Anderson
Summary: A road trip from Zagreb to Vukovar leads to angsting, carsickness, quoting of poetry by hung over men, swearing, and a dead goat. Rated PG-13R for swearing...


_"Road Trip" by VjeraNadaLjubav  
_

**Summary:** A road trip from Zagreb to Vukovar leads to revelations, carsickness, swearing, quoting of poetry by hung over men and a dead goat.  
**Rating: **PG-13 for language. Croatian is quite a sweary language – quite inventively so.  
**Spoilers:** "Things Change"/ "Foreign Affairs"  
**Disclaimer: **Damn it. Luka, Gordana, Stipe, Tomo, Danijela, Jasna and the goat are not mine, as is Mate Balota's poem "Koza". But I own random barflies, Danijela's grandmother, and the traffic cop, as well as any other characters you don't recognize.  
**Acknowledgements: **to all Gordana lovers out there. Thanks for reading my first foray into Gordana fic and enjoying it. Also, lots of thanks to wizened cynic, who gave my muse a well needed kick in the butt. And to my friends at Vukovar, who introduced me to rakija...  
**Author's note: **What is it with me and Luka's memories? Must be the season, or something I've myself have traveled from Zagreb to Vukovar, and know it takes about five hours on the bus, and assume it's about the same on a car.

Hour 1

Assholes. That's one word I can think of to describe my trio of friends. They knew we were driving to Vukovar today, but no, they had to go out after the exams. The result is that if not for the duo of Dinko and Dejo, the two very large and strong Dalmatian guys down the hall from my three idiots, I'd be still pulling them to the car one by one. Stipe's out cold – he hasn't shown a sign of life yet. Tomo is somewhat alive – he keeps groaning and muttering something, but he's still asleep. Luka is awake, but seems to be unable to put words together just yet. Jasna is the only one awake, and is actively involved with pulling at Uncle Stipe's hair. Since Luka was drunk, I had go and get his daughter from his mother. Somehow, I feel like there are four children in the car instead of one, and Jasna's the most responsible of the four.  
  
So here we are - a woman, a child and three hung over men, on our way to Vukovar, our supposed goal to drop Luka off at his wife's grandmother's house along with his daughter. The men have supposedly promised to paint the barn, or rather, I suspect, to help relieve the nice old woman of her alcohol supplies. These three assholes will make great doctors one day, but as handymen, their skills are very questionable, as I can attest, having to fix their constantly overflowing toilet because they just ruin it more if they try. I swear, I will personally stand watch over all the beer and moonshine until the barn looks like new. Jasna gets tired with pulling Stipe's hair and decides to take a nap, joining her two brain-dead uncles in dreamland. Her equally brain-dead father groans and puts a hand over his eyes to shade them from the morning sun and burps. I give him a glare which is wasted on his drunk brain and continue alternately driving and imagining the best way to smack him on the head until the traffic starts slowing down for the toll booth.   
  
As I wait in the line for the tollbooth, I take a look at the guys and roll my eyes. They obviously passed out long before thinking of going to bed, so they are still wearing the stuff they wore yesterday. Stipe's wearing the same ugly yellow shirt he wears every Friday, Tomo still has his nice shirt on, although it now has beer stains, and Luka, who I can see better then the other two because he is in the front seat, is wearing his favorite mutilated jeans and his beloved Bijelo Dugme T-shirt that has acquired new holes since yesterday. His hair, which really needs a haircut, is hanging over his face and makes him look a couple of years younger and just so – cute. Although I'm quite aware that he's married – after all, the product of that marriage is now fitfully sleeping on Tomo – and even though I adore Luka and Danka together, I sometimes wish I could have met him before she did.   
  
Anyway, if wishes could come true, I'd have my own plane and I wouldn't be driving three drunk asses five hours. I reach the bored tollbooth lady the money and continue driving when I realize that I never needed to go to the restroom as badly as I need now. For a couple of frantic minutes I swear under my breath at the lack of suitable bushes or public restrooms next to the highway and at the cursed male physiology, which really works better at times like this. Finally, I spot a gas station and almost cry with joy. I park the car in the shade of a tree so the three Musketeers won't get sunburned, retrieve a sleepy Jasna from Tomo's unmoving form and persuade her that the next little girls' room is four hours away and it's wise to go now. After finishing with that bit of business, I go back to the car, get a thermos and fill it up with coffee at the shabby café attached to the gas station. The boys are going to need it, I can tell.  
  
I return to the car and find that Jasna has chosen Uncle Stipe as the next mattress, who is perhaps more comfortable than Uncle Tomo because he's not snoring and not moving as much. The trip continues in silence until the car hits a pothole that seems to be the size of a small village. A collective and perfectly harmonious three-voice groan is heard from around me.   
  
"Fuck me!" Luka exclaims, finally getting his other hand up from his lap to hold onto his head.  
  
"That'll teach you to get drunk like a pig before car trips," I remark with a certain degree of gleefulness in my voice.  
  
"I swear, I only had six beers at the bar," he moans. "Oh, fucking God, my fucking head is killing me..."   
  
"Yeah, six beers, I really believe that. So Tomo and Stipe also had six beers too, and then when you came home another twenty beers drank themselves along with the bottle of my father's rakija and half a case of wine. You're lucky you're not in the hospital."  
  
"Di-hic-nko drank five of them and took three to Dejan- we-we didn't dri-hic-nk it all..." he says petulantly. I take mercy on Luka, since even though he usually is the instigator of the fun such as the last night's orgy, he, unlike the other two, is sometimes very trusting and will do anything if Tomo and Stipe ask him to. We need to have a talk.   
  
"Still, why the hell did you get drunk when you knew we would be driving next day, dumbass?"   
  
"I do-don't know... We were celem-celeber-celebrating?" Luka offers hopefully, finally dropping his hands from his face. He looks like shit – his face is white as a sheet, except for a rather colorful bruise on his cheekbone which I haven't noticed earlier in the excitement of helping Dejo and Dinko load and arrange the three Sleeping Beauties in their seats.  
  
"Where the hell did you get the bruise?" I ask, wondering what kind of trouble they have gotten into last night. My God, do I have to ask Danka to chain her idiot to the bed on Friday nights while I tie up the other two? These are three twenty-four year old men, yet a four-year old seems to have more common sense then all of them together.  
  
"At the bar – that asshole from Anatomy – God, I can't remember his fucking name - was talking about some crap again, about the Second World War, or something, and Stipe got pissed off and h-hit him and I was trying to separate them the asshole got me instead of Stipe." This speech exhausts Luka and he falls silent, staring hatefully at the sunny landscape around us.  
  
"Great, so now you guys were in a bar fight, too? Can't I leave you alone for one night?" No answer comes forth, except for a forlorn moan from the seat behind me, which might belong to Stipe. Great, he seems to be coming around. I really am going to chew Stipe out when he re-animates. It's not the first time he has started a fight where either Luka or Tomo got hurt. Once, in the beginning of second year, Luka wound up in the hospital because he got hit in the face by a chair in a fight started by Stipe and lost two teeth. Stipe and Tomo didn't come out looking much better, but Luka still was the one who couldn't eat for a week. But he forgave Stipe as soon as he got off the painkillers, the soft-hearted bastard he is and Stipe tearfully apologized and slobbered all over Luka's face while kissing him over what must have been the tenth apology beer that night. Luka will forgive his friends almost anything - and that's why I am friends with this asshole and the other two. Despite not having enough brains between three of them to fill a thimble, they have good hearts and would sell their last shirt for me or each other. I guess I shouldn't be as hard on Stipe too - he's been depressed lately, which is not very good, since he's thinking about specializing in psychiatry. His mom has terminal cancer, and he is taking it hard, and we should forgive his occasional drunken stupidity...

"Fuck-fuck-fuck! Pull the fucking car over before he pukes on me! Stipe, don't turn towards me!" Tomo screams from the back seat. Ah - the other sleeping beauties, or should I say beasts, have come to life. Stipe has finally awoken from his coma and is an interesting shade of green from what I can see of him in the rearview mirror. In maneuver worthy of a Hollywood movie, I manage to pull the car over to the side of the road, and listen as Stipe propels himself out into the grass and throws up for a while, making the other two boys turn green in commiseration. Jasna has awoken from her sleep, and has been thoughtfully rescued off Stipe by Tomo before the former's prize-winning leap from the car. Luka is now cringing and banging his head lightly against the dashboard, probably attempting to silence the brain cells which have been rudely awoken by Tomo's scream. After several minutes, the green being in the ugly shirt crawls back into the car.

"What time is it?" Stipe inquires, then looks around, eyes widening behind the dusty lenses of his glasses. "Where am I?"

"It's getting close to ten, and we're going to Vukovar. Remember? The barn? Luka?"

"Luka?" Stipe repeats dumbly, then notices the subject of the conversation collapsed on the dashboard, moaning. "What are you doing here? Ah - the barn... Were we in a barn?"

"No - we were in a bar - but then we were in our apartment," Tomo mutters. "But how did we get into the car?"

Leaving the boys to figure out how they floated from the apartment to the car, I start the car and continue on our way, but not before I slip Luka, who is the most sober of the three, the thermos, so he can sober his ass up and drive in an hour or so. He grasps the thermos from my hands and almost drinks all of the coffee in one gulp, immediately looking more alive. Just as he looks almost human again, a police siren howls behind us, and the boys groan in pain as their brain cells revolt once again. I begin to pull over to the side of the road, and decide that I am never again driving anywhere with these idiots and I will never be the designated sober driver with a brain again. No. Never again...

_to be continued..._


End file.
